I'm linking to a talk he gave at Brown where he goes into a history lesson on how NAFTA had the effect to, while helping its creators (wealthy), make the US a more attractive place to the bludgeoned poor of Central and South America economically. Therefore, our own actions during the Carter and Reagan years has made us more prone to illegal immigration.
He goes on to discuss that while since the late 19th/early 20th century, the 14th amendment rights for corporations as people have greatly expanded (due to their intrinsic power applied as legal appeal), the rights of illegal immigrants have been greatly reduced so that they are no longer consider people (slippery slope anyone?). He ties this in with the recent Arizona law where anyone who appears Latino has to carry around documentation of citizenship, in effect purporting a pro-white agenda in that state.
SB 1070
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBfHD2n13OA (50 mins duration)
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I don’t know if we have done this before, but let’s break immigration down to its core components.
ReplyDeleteLand
Nation
Birth Place
Opportunity
Free Market
Isolationism
Feel free to add to this in your follow up. I believe the precepts of the issue is that a section of ~2% the surface of this planet (Land) belongs to the United States (Nation). Citizens of the U.S., predominately on the proposition of (Birth Place), like to champion competition (Free Market) and dangle this allegorical carrot from a stick (isolationism) while adhering to the virtues of opportunity.
If this delineation is even close to being accurate, the flaws in our own beliefs appear self-evident (at least to me). I will tackle one of them here:
The happenstance of our birth being in the United States instantiates the justness of our ascription and generalized deference for opportunities within our borders. Irrespective of economic systems the prejudice extends from the educational system to the job market. But of course it would be beyond our exceptional-ism to admit one alien could perform a single task better than ourselves.